Antibiotic Resistant Infection Spotted In China, Experts Say It May Become Worse

There is a rampant fret in certain parts of the world about the superbugs loom. Such as in China, recent claims say that multi-drug resistant infections have been identified in the country.
A research published in the Lancet journal, documented the extent of drug-resistant infections in more than one Chinese province. Researchers confirmed that mcr-1 gene—a gene that makes bacteria resistant to colistin, an antibiotic of last resort, has spread in clinical settings.

(c) This 2006 colorized scanning electron micrograph image made available by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the O157:H7 strain of the E. coli bacteria.

For the study, researchers studied more than 17,000 samples from patients with infections of common bacteria found in the gut, in two hospitals in China’s Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces, over eight years. They found that about 1 percent of those samples were resistant to colistin.
Since the 1980s, China has used colistin in agriculture to speed animals’ growth. During that time colistin was banned for human use.
Recently, studies showed that overuse of colistin in animals can spread to people. Now that Chinese officials has now approved the use of colistin in hospitals, people fear that it could worsen the resistance problem.
"The emergence of mcr-1 heralds the breach of the last group of antibiotics, such as colistin. The withdrawal of the drug from agricultural use, and its introduction in the clinic might reduce colistin resistance rates in the community, and increase resistance in hospitals where they may be harder to treat or spread more easily. Our study finds that there are significant risk factors for the spread of mcr-1 infections, beyond just rural living and diet. The spread of colistin resistant bacteria will likely worsen when the drug is introduced in humans," Professor Tim Walsh told Medical Xpress.